Our Sunday Reviews

Veep – A

While Veep is having a stellar season, it needed an episode like this, where Selina reminds everyone just how she got where she is. When it’s time to curry favor in a political setting, to master a bunch of Congressman, she straight up Lyndon Johnsons that mutha. She starts out by throwing around promises like a drunk at closing time to Congress creatures of all shades — from minivan driving heartland moms to sex-addicted narcissists to ambitious aisle-crossing power-players. When it’s clear her running mate, Senator Tom James, is turning her votes back to abstentions to work a loophole that would give him the Presidential ring, she pounces in public, asks him to dance, then, once his snarling allusion to businessman Charles Baird plays his hand, she takes advantage of his lingering attraction. Of course, Gary sheepishly walks in on them, just after Amy breaks it to him that his inclusion on a Top 50 staffers list was a typo. Anyway, refreshed from the liaison, President Meyer proceeds to tear apart her former supporters in the most brutal — and effective — nature.

Of course, it wouldn’t be Veep, if she didn’t wind up right back there where she started from. It also wouldn’t be Veep if Mike and Gary’s wins weren’t fleeting — and if they weren’t destroyed like a nuclear bomb hitting an ant. Meanwhile, Jonah’s House run is exploding and imploding and the combo of Richard, Dan, Peter MacNicol’s Uncle Jeff, and Jonah is a whole lot of fun. Most interestingly, the humbling road life of the campaign seems to be doing just that, as Jonah is actually quiet and gracious at moments, and his essentially-Jonah breakdown is truly not his fault. It’s a brave move for a farce like Veep which soars on the eternal awfulness of its characters to humanize its absolute worst.
– Jason Thurston